Page 299 - First Aid for the USMLE Step 1 2020, Thirtieth edition [MedicalBooksVN.com]_Neat

HIGH-YIELD PRINCIPLES IN

Public Health Sciences

“Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.” `Epidemiology and
—William Osler Biostatistics 256

“There are two kinds of statistics: the kind you look up and the kind you `Ethics 265
make up.”
—Rex Stout `The Well Patient 270

“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” `Healthcare Delivery 270
—Chuck Palahniuk
`Quality and Safety 273
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
—Mark Twain

A heterogenous mix of epidemiology, biostatistics, ethics, law, healthcare
delivery, patient safety, quality improvement, and more falls under the
heading of public health sciences. Biostatistics and epidemiology are the
foundations of evidence-based medicine and are very high yield. Make
sure you can quickly apply biostatistical equations such as sensitivity,
specificity, and predictive values in a problem-solving format. Also, know
how to set up your own 2 × 2 tables. Quality improvement and patient
safety topics were introduced a few years ago on the exam and represent
trends in health system science. Medical ethics questions often require
application of principles. Typically, you are presented with a patient
scenario and then asked how you would respond.

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